I’m trying do develop a new theme for this page, the fonts have always irritated me. As you can see, I ain’t got no skills and it looks a bit messy right now. Rest assured I am diligently ignoring it for the time being, though. (It DOES look more readable to me?)  I’m sure I’ll give up on finishing it and switch back soon.

I guess Christmas is here!  Once again we didn’t get the house decorated.  I’m not sure how many years running that is;  Too many I’m sure.  At least this year we discussed it, usually we just totally ignore it.  I was supposed to put up the tree while Donette was out of town, but I didn’t get it done.  My rationale was “Why?”  I was home by myself, we have zero visitors…  Didn’t make no good sense.  Maybe next year.  Or, maybe not.

We actually had a remarkably busy weekend for once.  I was on vacation all week, which was quite nice.  As briefly mentioned last week, our friends Ed & Kim were in town;  Our first official visitors!  (This, of course, sort of contradicts my earlier statement of “zero visitors.”  It would have been a good idea to have a tree up for their kids…  Oops.  We did walk up and down the street looking at other people’s decorations, close enough.)  They headed to Tahoe on Monday, then we joined them Wednesday afternoon.  Donette was a little sick so we almost bailed out, but the rooms were already paid for so we didn’t want to just lose them.  It worked out well.  She started feeling better after some sleep, and mostly we just hung around the condo while they skied.  (Snowboarded, to be more accurate.)  They reported the conditions a little on the lame side the first few days, but Wednesday night there was a pretty good snowstorm that gave them some white stuff to work with.

We all headed back to El Dorado Hills Friday afternoon, and they had to fly out Saturday morning.  We didn’t exactly tear up the town while they were here, but for whatever reason we were rather exhausted and spent the vast majority of the day on the couch watching basketball.  As a matter of fact, that is all we did.  Sunday was only slightly more productive.  Donette did a thorough cleaning of the house in an attempt to get rid of any left-over germs from her little bout with the flu (or whatever it was.)  Meanwhile I hit the gym for a while, or perhaps it hit me.  After that I did the grocery shopping for our Christmas dinner.  We elected to go with turkey again, but deep-fried this time.  I am giving a go to the “dry brine” method this time, mostly out of interest and cheapness.  For the record, I didn’t want turkey, so it better be good.  They make an inhouse turducken at the grocery down the street, and I was dead-set on grilling one of those.  Donette was a little skeptical though, and likely with good reason.  I just wanted to try it more than anything.  Second on my list was rib roast.  This one she agreed sounded good, but they’re a little spendy.  Turkey, on the other hand, is still $1.49 and always a safe bet…  A reasonable compromise.

Quit snowing, but I’m going to stay inside just to be safe. Ed and his brother-in-law are out on the slopes, I want no part of it.

Hope we don’t get stuck up here, it’s really coming down.

My recent spate of vacation time is continuing, hence my lack of a timely update this week.  I was busy all day yesterday with more important things, as remarkable as that may sound.  I’m still on vacation today, but honestly not so busy.  We had a pretty laid-back weekend.  Donette finally got back from her travels, I’d been a bachelor for nine long days.  I picked her up from the airport Saturday, and we spent the rest of the day cuddling on the couch and watching Gone With The Wind.

Sunday afternoon we drove back down to Sacramento and met up with our friends Ed & Kim, who were able to come out for a visit.  We randomly decided on lunch at a place cleverly named “Burgers & Brew,” which turned out to be a fine choice.  Myself and Donette were particularly happy with it, there honestly aren’t a lot of great restaurants around our house and we’ve been in a state of food withdrawal for a while.  This place fit the bill very nicely though.  I wouldn’t call it exactly fancy, but good and also quite reasonably priced compared to the places around us.  I would guess we will suck it up and make the horrific 20 minute journey again sometime in the near future.  After lunch we headed back to our house, then took their little ‘uns up the street to the park to enjoy the beautiful weather for a bit.

Monday we all headed down to Old Folsom and had a good lunch at Samuel Horne’s.  It occurred to me that perhaps there actually are some decent places to eat nearby, I just might have to broaden my current 3-mile travel radius a bit.  That’s expecting a lot, 3 miles is already triple the area of my circle in KC.  Quite an inconvenient situation.  At any rate, we got some more food in us, then they loaded up and headed east to spend a few nights at Tahoe.  We are hoping to join them in a few days if it works out, we’re sort of playing it by ear.  We still haven’t found a good option for dog-sitting, although we do have somebody who can come by and check on her.  That might just be the way to go, we’ll see.  In the meantime, Donette had brought me back a glorious 13 lb. USDA Prime brisket, so I’m spending my free time cooking that.  (Inter-state beef trafficking….  were any laws broken there?)  Time to show these Californians what’s up.